2 Corinthians 5:19–21

In Christ "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Here I see God come into the world — God's side of things towards us — all the fullness of God, love and light, in bodily form. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses." He never said "Come to Me" until He had come to them. He did not wait in heaven and say, You get right and then come up here; but He came in sovereign grace where and when they were wrong.

God was seeking in His Son to bring men back into right relations with Himself. The Lord Jesus did not charge people's trespasses to them. To the poor sinner of Luke 7 He said, "Your sins are forgiven." To the woman caught in sin, in John 8, He said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more." Peter bound the sin of Ananias and Sapphira on them. Paul charged the sin of Elymas the sorcerer to him, and handed others over to Satan. But the Lord Jesus, while He was here, did not charge the trespasses of sinners to them, even though He rebuked the proud Pharisees and scribes. Grace marked His mission.

Adam was responsible for the guilt that has estranged man from God. We may say then that man was responsible to remedy this. But he could not: sin's enmity is too much for him. But God was in no way responsible to do so. In pure love and grace He laid the perfect foundation of reconciliation for all the world, by the gift of His own Son. The only way our trespasses could be "not imputed" to us was by the blessed sacrifice of Calvary, where they were imputed to Christ instead.

The blessed Saviour was "reconciling," acting toward this gracious end, during His life. He was rejected. If men had received Christ, the result would have proved that evil could be repaired. Now we know the truth is the opposite. But God first put the matter to man's responsibility, and then showed that repair was morally impossible.

The world murdered Him. But His coming announced a great amnesty on God's part, and that amnesty is still in force. It is still the time, the day of salvation, and God's ambassadors are still here proclaiming the fact.

Notice, first, there is no statement here of the world having been reconciled. The apostle is speaking about the attitude God took in Christ, when Christ came into the world. What Christ was doing when here, he says, we are doing as His representatives, "in His stead," now that He is no longer here. But that attitude is one of begging men to be reconciled — not telling them they are.

"Reconciling," "not imputing," and "committing to us the word of reconciliation." Without this last, the work of grace would have stayed incomplete in its application. For this same Jesus, who in His coming here below was reconciling and "not imputing," needed to be "made sin" for us, to die and go away. Once the work was finished, it still hung waiting to be applied. God crowned this glorious work of His grace by committing to man "the word of reconciliation."

No one under heaven can put himself outside the range of this most precious ministry. Before the reader can shut himself out from the application of all this grace to himself, he must prove that he does not belong to the world. This he cannot do, and so he must see that God is begging him to be reconciled.

While He is away, the grace of God sends His servants as ambassadors for Christ. In Christ's place they beg the poor world to be reconciled to God. Notice that the "you," twice repeated in italics, and the "ye" should be left out. Putting these pronouns in limits the truth to believers, whereas the appeal is to the world.

The apostle here gives the gospel message in his short formula — a sample "word of reconciliation." … Reconciliation nowhere has an aspect toward saints. It is really the word of reconciliation in the gospel message: we are told how to address the world of sinners. Reconciliation, like justification, is an absolute work. It has no degrees.

There is no such thought in Scripture as that of reconciling God: it always speaks of reconciliation to God. … So the reconciling of the world still goes on, with Christ absent and others acting in His place. But it is not atonement. And just because the reconciliation is going on, it is not finished.

The apostles were in a special way "ambassadors for Christ." They carried a message of such love. Through them God Himself entreated mankind to be reconciled to Him. You would expect man to be the one begging God for mercy. But God instead urges man to accept now the mercy He has so graciously offered to all. So we see His love not only in the wonderful sacrifice of His own Son to bear our sins. We see it also in His patient grace and pleading with men to receive His love.

The dignity is indeed great. They do not represent Levites, or priests, or even the high priest. They represent Christ dead and risen, and they do so in the aspect of divine grace — God as it were (it was not fitting to speak in absolute terms) beseeching through us. We entreat on behalf of Christ, or in His place: be reconciled to God. … The grace of God and of Christ is stamped on every word.

They make no claim of their own on the world's respect. Their dignity lies only in the message they carry.

When the Apostle wrote, "We are ambassadors for Christ," he was probably thinking of himself, his fellow workers and the other apostles. They were in a special sense entrusted with the Gospel. Yet his words apply to every believer. The church of God is like a divine embassy in a hostile world. Each of us has to remember that we are part of that embassy. Our attitude toward people must match the word of reconciliation we carry.

If he is an ambassador, he is an ambassador to somebody. Only the apostles could go as absolute ambassadors. There are not ambassadors now in quite the same way, but in some degree.

Two or three hundred years ago in Europe, countries had a custom. When one went to war with another, it called its ambassador home before landing a single cannon on foreign shores. … As long as the Parisians saw the English ambassador walking their streets, they knew there was still another chance for peace. Relations had not ended, and war was not yet decided. But as soon as he began to pack and asked the French government for his passport to leave, they knew war was decided.

"Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." What a message! God is now begging you to be reconciled to Himself, because on the cross He once settled the question of sin with Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that God made Him to be sin for us. But it adds that He "knew no sin." 1 Peter 2:24 tells us that "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree." But it assures us that "He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." 1 John 3:5 tells us that "He appeared to take away sins," and adds, "in Him there is no sin." Nothing could be clearer. Only a sinless sacrifice could meet the claims of God's holiness against sin. If Jesus had not been sinless, He could not have stood in the sinner's place. He would not have survived the judgment, and we would have had no Saviour.

One verse made this question clear to me: was Christ a sin-bearer all His life? The verse is, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." He must first be shown to know no sin all His life. Only then can He be made sin. If He bore sins during His life, that would mean atonement without blood. But "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."

Some commentators would translate sin for us as sin-offering. In the original language there is only one word for both sin and sin-offering. That is how closely the holy offering is identified with the sinful person who brings it.

Sin had to be put away completely out of God's sight. So God had to be perfectly glorified about it, in the very place where sin was before Him. Christ was made sin, and He appeared in order to remove it from God's sight, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Besides this, our sins (guilt) were in question, and Christ bore them in His own body on the tree. The sins are borne, and Christ has them no more. They are gone as guilt before God for ever.

There is much force and value in the word "made." It shows how completely righteousness was foreign to the nature of man, just as sin was foreign to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own — in other words, he knew no righteousness — and so he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and so He had to be "made sin," in order that we might be made righteousness — "the righteousness of God in Him." And this passage teaches more. That the Lord Jesus was "made sin for us" is no more real, no more true, no more solid, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him."

If God will not charge my trespasses to me, then what will He charge? Righteousness — even the righteousness of God… Sin is finished with, as far as the believer is concerned. Christ lives as our continuing righteousness before God, and we live in Him. There is not so much as one single entry against us in the book of divine justice; but there is a risen and glorified Christ to our credit.

The Old Testament sacrifices give us a picture of Christ's sacrifice. So God making Christ a sacrifice for sin can be explained. But that God should make Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us — that baffles all explanation… Sin marked everything we were. And all that we were, He was made when He died on the cross. Righteousness wholly characterizes God, and what He is we are made in Christ.